The 11th meeting of the three-day "Machinery Industry Capital Seminar" was successfully concluded in the quiet and peaceful western town of Somsonas. There were no bizarre casualties during the meeting, but that doesn't mean the outside world is calm. First of all, the constitutionalists of the Norman Empire once again spoke out on international radio, urging those in power to face up to the country's accumulated ills, and making it clear that political reform is the best option to solve the problem at present, and that repression by force is the next resort. The Norman government then issued a statement reiterating that the so-called constitutionalists were illegal political organizations and severely condemning their attempts to use external forces to influence and change the political landscape of the Norman Empire, disturb the people's minds, and achieve ulterior motives. Due to the disparity in status and influence between the two sides, coupled with the overall stability of the international situation, this war of words did not set off a big storm, but the subsequent events were even more eye-catching - the joint air exercise held in the Furious Sea was hit by a storm, many of the participating ships were damaged, and one ship of the Federation and the Norman Empire each went missing, and the military exercise turned into a search and rescue operation, and the large-scale search turned out to be fruitless, so there was a mysterious force field in the Furious Sea, or speculation that visitors from outside the world were quietly haunting, It has quickly become a new hot topic, and science fiction in this background has also come to life in the pen of various writers.

The confusing events of the Furious Sea have drawn the attention of the common people to the East, but the attention of the top level of the Federation is obviously more realistic and rational. With the passage of time, the exploration and research of the "spaceship relics" in the north, which consumed considerable manpower and material resources, has entered a period of full mining, but the amount of star source stone mining is less than one-third of the expected, although there are various seemingly reasonable reasons, but the federal high-level is gradually losing patience at the same time, there are more and more vigilance and reflection on the plot behind this series of events.

The accidental loss of ships by the Federation Flying Fleet in the Furious Seas was not directly related to the subsequent integration of the Federation Flying Fleet and Flying Forces into the Federal Air Force, but the former played a more or less catalytic role in the process of promoting the decision of some high-level leaders.

Before the integration of the armed forces, the flying fleet was the "guardian of the sky" in legal theory, and some of the flying units were subordinate to the flying fleet, some were subordinate to the army units, and some were under the command of the bomber command; although in wartime they could be uniformly dispatched by the aviation operations department of the General Staff, the multi-headed management and decentralized organization were obviously not conducive to the long-term development of the flying troops, and they were also an obstacle to the cultivation and exchange of qualified personnel, and the competition between the flying fleet and the flying units for resources in peacetime was also quite fierce. After the integration, the Federal Air Force will be in charge of the "flying" combat units, unified organization, unified scheduling, and unified planning. Although this kind of large-scale integration means that it will take a considerable period of time to readjust the positioning of troops and personnel, in the long run, as long as the management is proper and the command is correct, the advantages of this integration will inevitably outweigh the disadvantages.

In late autumn, the Federal Air Force launched a military exercise in the central region nicknamed the "Iron Brothers". As the first large-scale military exercise after the integration of the armed forces, the elite of the fleet and the aircraft fleet were fully exerted, mighty and inspiring, and at the technical and tactical level, breakthroughs were made in many subjects that were difficult to practice in the past for various reasons, such as the confrontation drills between warships and fighters that were close to actual combat. Warhawks roar in the sky, wonderful formation maneuvers are dazzling, and huge battleships are like floating castles, shining with the charm of metal in the sun. Externally, this was a drill in which there was no victory or defeat, but internally, a high-level think tank team with the General Staff Headquarters as the main body conducted a cautious assessment of the combat effectiveness of flying warships and combat aircraft. The results of the assessment were kept secret, but in the "thinking season" that followed, the military top brass drew up a complete schedule for military development in the coming year, and it is not difficult to see from the composition of the schedule that the progress of installing new fighters has been greatly accelerated, and the number of equipment is quite impressive, while the plan for the construction and renewal of flying warships has slowed down slightly.

Masar of the Emilian federal state was a good military man and a first-class politician, but not a true career prophet. In this still cold winter, the crown of the Norman Empire was still on the head of the seriously ill Hohenstaufen IV, but the old emperor was unable to govern, and the country was basically in a state of "princely supervision", that is, the crown prince Albert acted as the government, and the prince of Barras and the princes of the Norman royal family were in charge of military affairs, everything seemed to be calm, nothing unusual happened, but in the north, the "storm" of Wessex was not only not limited by the severe cold, but churned in this season when there was more time to thinkDissatisfied with the royal family's support for military reforms, the capital garrison, led by a group of senior officers, staged a bloody coup d'état, overthrowing the Rollard dynasty, which had ruled Wessex for thousands of years, and declaring Wessex into a republican era without a monarch.

Surprisingly, the sudden disappearance of royal power not only did not plunge Wessex into division and civil war, but instead gave birth to a new federal republic. Of course, before the situation was brought under control, there were weeks of unrest in Wessex, with vital transportation facilities around the capital being vandalized and foreigners leaving the country or taking refuge in the embassy district, but the confrontation between the troops was eventually resolved peacefully. With the exception of members of the Rollard dynasty and a small number of officers and soldiers of the royal guard, there were few casualties among other groups during the coup, and the nobility accepted the end of the monarchy in Wessex with surprising calm. Under these circumstances, the Free Commonwealth reached a rare tacit agreement with the Norman Empire, and spent this relatively short special period with close attention.

The impact of force majeure seems completely understandable and acceptable due to the stagnation of the "spaceship relics" due to the coup d'état, but after the establishment of the Wessex Federation, the government authorities have been slow to restart the excavation and mining, and they always shirk inquiries from other countries on various grounds. At the beginning of the spring, the Confederation and the Norman Empire invariably made representations to the Wessex people through diplomatic channels, accusing them of unwarranted delay that violated the spirit of the association agreement and infringed on the legitimate interests of the countries that signed the agreement.

In the face of the joint pressure of the powerful countries, the federal government of Wessex took the trouble to explain and constantly gave a timetable for restarting the excavation, but these were only their delaying methods, and the experts from various countries who returned to Wessex were unable to resume their research for a long time. Even with the threat of economic sanctions, the federal government of Wessex has gone its own way, and there is even intelligence that they have secretly resumed excavation and mining at sea, which means that the Star Stone resources mined there are exclusively owned by the Wessex people. According to earlier estimates, the Wessex Federation may be able to achieve a counterattack in a limited time and regain a pivotal role on the international stage at all costs...... However, under the premise of the possibility of invasion by foreign civilizations, the concept of state and cultural differences on the planet Orensian will become insignificant, and the survival and continuation of civilization will be the only goal. As a result, the selfish practices of the Wessex federal government were unanimously criticized by public opinion from the outside world, and after eliminating the Wessex military representatives, the International Joint Staff repeatedly deliberated and weighed, and finally made the decision to hold a large-scale exercise in the south of Wessex.

Inspired by the concept of the Orensian civilization to unite with the outside world, people are obviously tired of the practice of settling disputes by force, and targeted military exercises are the ultimate expression of psychological acceptance. However, considering that the Wessex federal government is a nascent regime and the country's thinking is not yet mature, it is inevitable that it will make irrational choices under extreme circumstances, and the International Joint Staff informed the participating countries that the exercise was mainly empty ammunition, but it also needed to carry a certain proportion of live ammunition.

In accordance with the past practice, when holding a joint military exercise, each country's participating ships designated a flagship, and each side sent military inspectors to each other to observe and liaise with the other country's flagships throughout the whole process, or to supervise -- whether the participating ships carried the corresponding equipment and ammunition in accordance with the requirements of the exercise, and whether they followed the exercise agreements in the process, these are the duties of the military inspectors. During the build-up of ships to a predetermined area, military inspectors will board the flagships of other countries in advance and report the status of their preparations by radio, often in coded words, so as to facilitate the communication of the actual status of the preparations for the exercise to their own personnel.

This time, in order to achieve the purpose of peaceful deterrence, the Norman Empire dispatched three sub-fleets, although the number of participating ships was less than 40% of their active flying ships, but the tonnage accounted for more than 60%, and the latest and strongest capital ships basically appeared in the ranks of the exercise. Correspondingly, the federal side dispatched one-third of the total number of flying ships, and nearly half of the tonnage, and in addition to the main combat ships, this time the federal air force dispatched 24 bomber squadrons to the northern air base, including six newly formed heavy attack aircraft squadrons.

Although the International Joint Staff temporarily kicked out the Wessex military representatives, and now they are going to hold large-scale military exercises in Fries and the northern part of the Free Federation, they still informed the Wessex military in advance, saying that during the exercise, there may be ships and planes that strayed into the territory of Wessex, but there is absolutely no intention of violating the national sovereignty of Wessex - the huge flying fleet is noisy outside the door, even if it does not take a step beyond the thunder pool, the meaning of the demonstration is also clear. In response, the Wessex sent additional air and ground air defense forces to the southern border, and although their military strength was largely restored after the war, the strength of the Wessex fleet was still insufficient, and the technical and tactical level of its ground air defense forces was also at the pre-war level. If there really is an armed conflict, the Wessex people may not be able to hold out for even a round in front of the combined forces.